The New "New Normal" Emerges in the Photographs of Jeff Wall

Known for an awkward, aggressively regular aesthetic combined with a patient and cinematic craftsmanship, Jeff Wall’s photographs depict both public and domestic scenarios from rural, suburban, and industrial areas. In the majority of them, absolutely nothing special is going on at all. Day workers gather by a lumberyard, people fold laundry in borrowed flats, or stand alone in random hallways, skycranes punctuate the low sky above a grimy harbor on an overcast day, a small bedroom has been trashed to pieces and left in chaos. That last scenario appeared as the album cover for a Sonic Youth compilation of, fittingly enough, b-sides.